'Civil War' troops to camp at Town Center

Yankee and Confederate troops camping amid towering concrete and glass buildings may seem out of place, but that will be the plan this weekend at Virginia Beach's Town Center.

The occasion: Virginia Musical Theatre's production of "The Civil War."

Next year marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the conflict. Few events in our country's history cut so deeply and so markedly changed our national psyche. The wounds of the war lay open for years.

THE SHOW

Eighteen singers and seven musicians perform songs interwoven with words from Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman and Frederick Douglass. Projections of period photographs and images add visuals. The production, composed by Frank Wildhorn, opened on Broadway in 1999. It has since toured nationally, including performances at Gettysburg and Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.

THE BATTLE PLAN

Virginia Musical Theatre director Jeff Meredith saw a performance of "The Civil War" last spring at Ford's Theatre, where Lincoln was assassinated.

"It was a very special experience," seeing it there, Meredith said. "The show is a song cycle about heartache, loss and triumph over suffering. I told the cast that we are storytellers. This is about a historic event and about those who lived it."

Meredith said he booked the production because of its wonderful music and timely stories. "I think that we're, once again, ordinary people living in extraordinary times."

Meredith has planned artifact displays, guests from the past and a Civil War encampment outside the Sandler Center for the Performing Arts.

"I like it when theater becomes more than just a performance," he said.

THE ENCAMPMENT

Chesapeake welder Armand Dufresne has gathered about a dozen Yankee, Confederate and civilian re-enactors to participate in the encampment from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

"I started out as a private and worked my way up through the ranks," he said.

The longtime re-enactor will portray a Confederate lieutenant colonel.

"I love talking to people one-on-one and teaching them about what's not in the history books," Dufresne said. "It's a lot of work, but it's very rewarding."

THE SOLDIERS

Virginia Beach schoolteacher Greg Smith will participate dressed as a Yankee captain. Smith often slips on a Civil War or World War II uniform and joins in living-history re-enactments for schools and the public. He brings his love of history and some of his artifacts into class.

"I think it gives the students a better understanding of what it was like," Smith said. "A student can put on a thick wool jacket like soldiers used to wear and feel how hot it was."

Re-enacting helps him teach history to his seventh-graders at Brandon Middle School, he said.

"I can use my imagination and be like a soldier stepping out of a time machine."

A few of the authentic Civil War artifacts he plans to display inside the Sandler include an 1862 Springfield rifle with bayonet, U.S. belt buckle, canteen, breast- plate, swords and bullets.

THE STUDENTS

Virginia Beach Landstown Middle School social studies teacher Carrell Horvath lobbied for a Friday matinee performance for students. Almost all of the sixth-grade class will attend.

"I have the lyrics of a number of the songs, and we've been going over them," she said. "Some of them are quite sentimental. 'Brother My Brother' is one of them. 'Virginia' is another one. The one that the children really like is 'Missing You (My Bill).' That song ties right to the feelings and emotions of the women at home and their role that they take on when their husbands are gone."

Horvath likes how the production and encampment will expose her students to the causes and the effects of the war through art.

"A number of our students don't have opportunities to see musical theater," she said. "You don't just learn history sitting in a classroom reading a text book."

Roy Bahls, (757) 446-2351, roy.bahls@pilotonline.com